


A trail for the devil to erase

by lexsunshine_0316



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Coming Out, Happy Ending, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 18:47:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20980631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexsunshine_0316/pseuds/lexsunshine_0316
Summary: Title is from "Piazza New York Catcher" by Belle and Sebastian, aka the most romantic song ever.Enjoy :-)





	A trail for the devil to erase

Could you please slow down, for fuck's sake?"Just as I'm saying this, I crash back against my seat, as Boris suddenly pulls the brakes.

"You're just nervous, Potter, I'm good driver, chillax!"  
"Chillax", I say, imitating his accent.He scoffs.Before i know it, we're right outside Kitsey's old house, parked right next to Tom Cable's car.Tom Cable, who is now a constant in Kitsey's life.So much of a constant that they're staying together, and he parks his car in front of her childhood home.If miss Barbour could wrap her head around Kitsey's Cable, she can wrap her head around my Boris, too, i think to myself.

It is the first time I'm seeing the Barbours, all of them, in months.Last time I had told them why I had always stared down at my plate when my love life came up at family meetings, or why Kitsey had smelled ten different men's cologne on me within the span of a week that one time.They had all smiled and squeezed me into a hug. "You very much are still Theo", Mrs Barbour had said, cupping my face.I had cried, her hand stroking my hair.I hadn't asked Boris to come pick me up that night, prefering to weep in a taxi, slouching against the door.

Now I am, indeed, nervous.One thing I had been too overwhelmed to tell them about was Boris.I had mentioned him in passing, and they had even seen him around me several times.But no one had really bothered to ask me about him.  
I unbuckle my seatbelt, lightly punch Boris's shoulder and try to stand up, but he pulls me back down.  
"Aren't you gonna pay your chauffer?" He says it like "tschoh-fer".I don't bother to correct him, and I wouldn't be able to say anything anyway, because he kisses me before I can talk.When we break off, I pick up his hand and press a kiss to his knuckles, right next to his ring.  
"Good luck, Potter."  
He gets up himself, locks the car and walks up to me, grabbing my hand and squeezing it.I promptly squeeze back, then let go of it which makes him scoff again.  
Kitsey opens the door, effusive as ever, blond hair tied up into a messy bun, wearing a tunic over some indoors clothes, yet looking more put together than most of the people i'd seen at the antique shop that day.Typically Kitsey. I remember Boris saying something about her being the most distinguished person in the room.  
"Come in, Theo dear!Let me take your coat.Hi, Mr. Pavlikowski!It's good to see you."In spite of her natural friendliness, she can't help being a bit puzzled now, but she hardly lets on, anyway.  
I hug Mrs Barbour and Platt and reluctantly shake hands with Cable, who raises an eyebrow at the sight of Boris, ever so slightly. No one else makes any further comments about his presence, which I'm so grateful for.  
We talk about Kitsey and Tom Cable's plans to have a baby, Mrs Barbour's health issues, Platt's business plans and all things related.The conversation is animated by Boris's laughter, who easily blends in with the others, who are, thankfully, fascinated by him.  
"What about you, Theo, what have you been up to?"  
Mrs Barbour's question comes as an accusation of sorts, even though I'm fairly sure she doesn't mean it that way.  
I clear my voice, scratch the back of my head:"I do actually have a lot going on.I really wanted to talk about it properly.I-"  
"Yes, Theo?"  
They're all looking at me with mild concern.Knowing of my history of drug addiction and improper living condtitions, they really do have something to be concerned about, especially after the Amsterdam episode.Then Boris takes my hand into his, our rings sparkling in the dim, conversational light.

-

Three years ago, just after Boris and I had finally done away with the painting, i was in my hotel room, scouring the Dutch newspapers for some sense, heroically keeping myself from contacting Boris, as he'd instructed me not to, and thinking about his wound.What it looked like, what it must have felt like, and how badly I wanted to tend to it. He'd apparently been taken away by the police for driving without a license, and all that was left to do was to wait and try not to despair.  
After hours of staring at the ceiling, noticing that it was clumsily painted in some places, biting my nails until my fingers were a bloodied mess, and taking my clothes out of my suitcase then folding them into neat heaps and putting them back again, I picked up my phone.And I texted him, "whre are hou?", fingers shaking on the keyboard.The fact that I was trying to contact him from this ratty old phone didn't help either, as it eventually died for good.  
And then, after the whirlwind of trying to buy plane tickets just to realise my passport was nowhere to be found, and feeling the absence of Boris sharper than ever, like a sting in a missing limb, as I was fairly sure he wouldn't be coming back, and the mix of substances down my stomach that felt much like swallowing molten copper, there was a telephone ring.  
"Hello, Mr Decker.There's someone who says he knows you walking up to your room.We have tried stopping him, but he snuck upstairs.We've sent someone to make sure you're all safe-"  
Boris bursts through the door before the guy on the phone can even finish his sentence.I regret not locking the door.  
Boris grabs my face and looks at me as if he wants to kiss me into the next century.If it weren't for the member of the staff standing in the door pane gaping at us, I would let him.  
"It's okay, sir.We know each other", I say, reassuringly.  
Boris mumbles something about us being good pals, then slams the door shut.  
And there he is, a ball of fire glowing inside my room, chuckling about things we did back in the day, scolding me for my weight loss, even though he's still the scrawnier one.The people laughing next door are increasingly less irritating.It feels almost like Christmas.  
Boris helps me back into bed, after taking the dirty sheets away from me. "Did you really sleep in your own puke, Potter, you junkie?".  
He leaves me his telephone number, scrawled on a piece of paper in the room, drawing a little heart instead of a dot on the "i".

Back in New York, we go out drinking, doing bumps or just meeting at Hobie's to watch old films.Hobie starts suspecting things after he sees Boris sleeping on my lap one night. "That's how Russians are," I say, feeling a tinge of shame.It's clear as day that he doesn't believe me, but I don't bother to sound more convincing.  
I buy a new flat with the reward money, and I promise Boris to let him paint my walls himself.

When he is "out of town", as he puts it, I go to gay bars out of curiosity, then just for the thrill of it.I never tell Boris about it.Sometimes I bring men home, never letting them inside my bedroom.One of them sees a text from Boris that lights up my phone screen in the dark, and asks:"Dude you're pining after?"  
"Absolutely none of your business."  
"You look like you want to read him poetry when you text him.I simply couldn't not ask."  
He's quite tall and stout, an Arab guy with a septum piercing, maybe too laid back to be an art historian and too pretentious to be anything else.His name is Anwar and he calls himself a "bear", whatever that means. Just because I sleep around with guys that doesn't mean I have to learn how they like to call themselves, I tell Anwar the third time he visits me."I'm not really sure I fit in with all of you, anyway.I just do this to kill time until..."  
"Until what?"  
"Until..."  
"Okay, Gucci Jordaan leather loafers", he says, tousling my hair in a way that's anything but erotic.  
After that, we stop seeing each other at night altogether, prefering to be brunch buddies. We talk about Stonewall, internalised homophobia, and what has become of gay bars."The sex wasn't very good, anyway", he once confesses.

-

Boris finally shows up on my doorstep, with a tin of emerald green paint in his hand. "No fucking way", I say instead of hello.  
"Yes fucking way", he replies, with the Boris signature smirk.He paints all of the walls in my living room in less than five hours, without even letting me hold his paintbrush.At some point, he asks me to go buy him another tin of paint from the shop at the other side of the neighbourhood.I call myself a taxi, and i hear him mumble "пидоры не умеют водить" under his breath. I only pick up one word, and roll my eyes at him anyway.  
He's done at about 8 pm, but it's pitch dark already.  
"You know, you could stay if you wanted to, but you'd have to sleep in my bed because the couch is, uh..."  
"It's fine, Potter, I have things to do and people to meet so it w-"  
I glower at him, in that half dim light, because I don't know when and if we'll meet again.I'm mad at him for leaving just like that, and at myself, after a good nine years, for not telling him what I wanted to, that night before we split ways for the first time.He mouths I'm sorry, with a sad little face and everything, which makes me irritated enough to grab him by the lapels of his coat and up to my face, so fast our teeth meet with a clatter when i kiss him, and he pokes me in the nose with the side of his face.He goes stiff, with his arms around himself, and I stop.  
He pulls away, wipes his mouth with his sleeve. "Sorry, Potter, it's not like that for me."  
I suddenly have a migraine.  
"Fuck, Boris, I'm so sorry, so fucking sorry, I didn't know what I was doing, please, I absolutely meant no harm-"  
"It's more like THIS"he says, and then he kisses me, in a way that feels like he's been practicing that for long enough to send me reeling.As if to make up for those confusing and screwed up times in Vegas.As if to coax out the words I should have said when he kissed me the first time, as a kid. As if he's saying, "Yes, Potter, I do wanna stay here at your place tonight.And tomorrow.And the day after that." Which he does, and we walk hand in hand to Hobie's the very next day.

After two years of seeing each other, and sneakily making out behind various pieces of furniture in Hobie's shop during lunch breaks, and having a therapist help us sort through the entire mess that had been our life , I give him the key to my apartment.He accepts it, with a childish smile that curves into a smirk when he looks up at me. "Fag-", and I muffle him with a cushion before he can finish his sentence.

One time, when we see each other for the first time in weeks, as he'd had to get all of immigration papers done with, I say nothing when he walks into my apartment, obviously without knocking.He doesn't say anything either.He just wraps his arm around my shoulders to pull me towards him.I pick him up, ignoring his protests, and pin him up against the wall.  
"What the mother fuck, Theodore.This is a Chanel coat."  
I get down on one knee, letting him go, and I plunge my hand into my pocket-"Oh well, Borya," I pull out the little black box, that Pippa had picked out, and open it up, revealing the ring I had got from Welty."This is a wedding ring.Will you marry me?"

He falls to his own knees in shock, gapes at me then smiles, in the purest, most Boris-esque way possible.I don't notice the tears bubbling up at the corners of his eyes, as my own vision is blurred.  
"Yes, Potter", he says, his fingers scritching the side of my head.I can't really put his ring on given the sweat of my palms, and he can't put mine on either, because his hands are shaking. We both laugh there on the floor, huddled against each other, his Chanel coat now in a pile somewhere.He kisses the tears off my face, and we stay right there for what feels like thirty minutes, but proves to be four hours when i check my watch.I help Boris up, take off his boots, as he is too numb with sleep to do so himself, then sling him over my shoulder, and into bed.In the morning, it all feels like back in Vegas:raucous laughter, both of us sticky with sweat when i sleepily wrap my arm around him.Except that, this time, we can both give a name to this, without fearing that we make it sound more like what it is.

-

Mrs. Barbour gets up from her seat and walks behind me and Boris, hugging the both of us against herself.After a good 30 minutes of congratulations and blessings from both the Barbours and Tom Cable, and Boris and I obviously keeping ourselves from crying, I go out for a smoke on the balcony, to text Pippa that I could finally bring myself to tell the Barbours, which is an achievement in itself. Her profile picture pops up:fiery locks of hair, and a twinkle of childish mischief in her eye, accompanied by a message that says, "SO PROUD OF U, THEO!GAY RIGHTS!"  
Boris joins me, after another fifteen minutes.I lift the phone up to his face while he's kissing my knuckles.He drops my hand, laughs at the message, to which he replies with a picture of himself winking, that also says "gay rights!!!", then pulls me closer.  
"Your little ice princess thought I was your cab driver, this whole time.Even she knows gay people like you can't drive" We both crack into laughter, clumped against each other.When we both silently agree that we've been staying on the balcony for longer than acceptable, he lets go of me, opens the door and leads me back inside, curling his arm around my waist, hand resting on my hip.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Piazza New York Catcher" by Belle and Sebastian, aka the most romantic song ever.Enjoy :-)


End file.
